Madrid

I’ve officially passed the halfway point of my study abroad experience, and I finally feel like I’ve found a routine with my classes. I think I got pretty lucky with my class schedule because (a.) all of my classes will count directly toward my major (literally unheard of here, especially at Madison), and (b.) they really just aren’t that much work. I know everyone says study abroad classes are jokes, but there are a few classes here that everyone is having trouble with that I accidently managed to avoid.

I honestly don’t think I’m slacking off here (I haven’t missed a single class), but coming from Madison, it's uncomfortable not having at least 3 hours of work every night. Midterms are coming up, so that’ll change this weekend, but I can’t imagine anything I’ve learned so far giving me too much trouble. Plus I only have a midterm in 3 of my classes and one of them I’m taking pass/fail (and you only need a 4/10 to pass), so I’m not particularly worried.

But enough about school. The last time I wrote I mentioned that Mike Lee would be visiting. Funny story. He asks for my address the night before he’s supposed to arrive so he can figure out how far away I am from the airport, and Google maps told him it was eight hours. Turns out his buddy mixed up Genoa, Italy with Girona, Spain. It makes sense at first, what with the names being so similar, but when you think a little more about it, you realize they’re two different countries and that mistake seems a little less forgivable.

We rallied from this disappointment to throw together a relatively uneventful  weekend. People keep leaving us to go on fabulous trips across Europe, so weekends are not quite as epic as they were a month ago (based off of Barcelona standards, which admittedly are unfairly high). I even stayed in last Saturday because there was nothing going on.

This weekend, however, made up for it. Our entire group took a weekend trip to Madrid, about a 2 ½ hour high-speed train ride from Barcelona. The weather wasn’t ideal, but we always seemed to be out in between rain storms, so it worked out.

Our first stop after our hotel was a short walking tour of the city and a guided tour of the Prado Museum. The walk to the museum was much more interesting than the museum itself. We were right in the middle of the city, 30 seconds away from the Plaza Mayor.

Can you spot the bubbles?

Here we learned that street performers in Madrid put street performers in Barcelona to shame.

They sat like this. All day.

However, this was the most entertaining street performer of the day.

What you can see in this picture is a fat guy in Spiderman suit, an identical Fat Spiderman made out of clay, and a plastic box. If you gave him money, he would stand on the box and pose like the tiny Spiderman. However, shrewd business man that he is, he refused to let anyone else who didn’t pay get a picture. So basically his posing came in between him yelling at people taking pictures who hadn’t paid him. It was really entertaining to watch.

But not even that could top what we found next. For those of you who have never been to Spain, the country is littered with dogs. If we made a bet that you would have to walk one mile in the streets of Barcelona without seeing at least three dogs, you would lose every time. Also, I think I’ve seen as many children on leashes (it’s degradingly common here) as I have dogs. With or without a leash, they never stray more than ten feet away from their owners. With this many dogs out and about, you’re bound to find at least one that you consider stealing and shipping back to the US. Between the Plaza and the museum, I found mine:

I saw at least one other person take a picture with it.

And just so you can really understand how floppy its ears are…

If you can look at it and not smile you don't have a soul

Seeing this dog was in one of my top three moments in Madrid.

Oh yeah, the museum. If you know anything about Spanish art, you would have appreciated the Prado museum. Here’s a list of some of the paintings you might recognize:

Las Meninas (Diego Velázquez)

Saturn Devouring his Son (Francisco de Goya)

The Adoration of the Shepherds (El Greco)

The Third of May 1808 (Francisco de Goya)

Charles IV of Spain and His Family (Francisco de Goya)

It was actually pretty cool to be three feet away from some of the most well-known paintings from the most famous painters in history.

That night we planned on checking out El Kapital, a seven story discoteca and (obviously) the largest in Spain. First, though, a group of us just walked around the city and checked out a few of the bars. Madrid’s economy is struggling pretty hard, so it wasn’t hard to find promoters standing outside of bars beckoning us in with really good drink deals. Basically we stayed just long enough to take advantage of the discount, then moved on to another bar.

This was a great pregame for the best club I’ve been to in Spain. We got there relatively late, so the line to get in was like two blocks long. However, nonchalantly shimmying your way into the front of the line worked surprisingly well, and we were in right away.

We wanted to check out the whole club before deciding on which floor to stay at, which ended up being a great decision. Each floor had different music and a different feel to it; some had dance floors, some were mostly couches, some were lit differently. Every floor was a different experience. We ended up staying on the seventh floor, though. Since smoking was allowed on this floor, there was a retractable roof that was open, since it had stopped raining. In lieu of music and dancing and stuff, there were a bunch of tables, couches, lounge areas, and whatever you would call these:

Massage...Bed? Regardless it's probably not meant to be shared with another guy.

We stayed there for about an hour before heading back to the main dance area on the first floor, where my friend and I casually walked straight into the VIP area and spent most of the rest of the night there.

We probably didn't look quite as cool up there as we thought we did.

Saturday was a little slower. We went to another museum, this time with more abstract and surrealist paintings. Other than Guernica (Pablo Picasso’s gigantic painting about the WWII bombings), I wasn’t really enamored by it, but there were a few highlights…

HA!

So much to love in this painting.

Because we had an early next morning visiting Repsol, Spain’s version of Exxon-Mobil, I wasn’t trying to go out that night. Instead, a group of us went to Botin, touted as the oldest restaurant in the world. While I don’t believe that at all (I think they just narrowly defined restaurant and ignored the eastern part of the world), it was still really old and it was nice to have a fancy meal for the first time since realizing I have no money.

The problem with going to an expensive place with a bunch of people is that you’re sharing appetizers and wine and water (which, by the way, is like 2 euros a bottle no matter where you go), so figuring out how to share stuff can be tough. Once I got over that, my only worry was how to pull all the meat off my roast lamb and suckling pig bones.

Good problems to have.

The next day was our visit to Repsol, but the tour sucked and we were more concerned with making it to Taco Bell afterward. It was important because there are only two Taco Bell’s in all of Europe, and we weren’t about to let an opportunity to go to one slip through our hands. The fifteen minute cab ride up the freeway was totally worth it.

Taco Bell, in a COMPLETELY deserted mall.

With that, we were back on the train to Barcelona and mentally preparing ourselves for getting through midterms so we can get to the long weekend and on our way to Morocco.

Two months down, two to go.